We were lucky to catch up with Corinne DeCost recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Corinne thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I try to give meaning to all of my projects. Everything we do touches someone.

Years ago, I worked activities in the memory care unit of an assisted living facility. On what felt like a normal day, I went around and sang songs with the residents. Something about these old standards sticks with them even if they couldn’t tell you much else about their current situation. Many of the residents were quiet that day – they were happy listening and nodding along – but one woman sang along at full volume. Together we sang “somewhere over the rainbow”. The next day, I came in and learned she had passed in her sleep that night.

At Netflix’s Stranger Things Experience, I brought to life hero characters for kids who desperately needed a hero post-pandemic. They got to meet them through me. And they got to fight alongside their hero and feel like heroes themselves. That work was different but felt just as important.

I remember once meeting an older woman whose favorite movie was Mouse Hunt, and I couldn’t get over it. Everyone else in the group had listed a traditional favorite movie – Casablanca, It’s a Wonderful Life or even Titanic. For her, it was this buddy comedy starring Nathan Lane and a mouse. That movie – that I hadn’t remembered existing until she had brought it up in that moment – brought her such immense joy. Even if everyone else had forgotten it, it meant something to her – even if it was just the relief of laughter in her otherwise stressful situation. I hope to someday make someone else’s Mouse Hunt, something that lifts them out of their own lives even for a moment.

Corinne, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I was born into theatre. My parents met in theatre, my first time onstage was in utero. When I was born, the founder of Seacoast Repertory Theatre in New England sent them a letter, welcoming me to the theatre family.

“I like anything that is even near show business. I don’t feel well unless I’m near it.” – Little Edie Beale

I’ve been onstage since I was 3 years old. I had a lot of loneliness as a kid but performing was the first place I finally felt I wasn’t alone. I felt seen by the audience – we share a moment in time, forget everything in our real lives, and we just feel together. I was shy onstage at first, but as I learned to let the audience in, they learned to let me in too. It was my first love.

You can find a variety of articles online about my early days onstage. I choreographed my first musical in elementary school. There’s various articles naming roles I played – Christmas Past in Christmas Carol, Luisa in The Fantastiks. I was interviewed for playing Anne in Diary of Anne Frank at the Amesbury Playhouse.

I founded the sketch comedy troupe at Suffolk University, which has now been running for 12 years. This month, I’ll be flying back to Boston to be honored at their 10 Under 10 – celebrating alumni from the last ten years who have gone on to make lasting contributions in their field and in the community.

3 years after I graduated, those freshmen I knew from the sketch comedy troupe graduated. This group is now run by people I’ve never even met, who have probably never even heard of me. I guess that’s what a legacy really is. It’s hard to believe that I have one of those. I hope the group still brings people together and inspires young artists to spread laughter. I can’t imagine a better legacy.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I have so many jobs. I thought for a long time that I had to pick just one of them.

I performed all through my childhood, worked onstage and off in at least 40 productions, yet I was afraid to pursue it. I was convinced that if I made the things I loved into a career, I’d begin to resent them.

In college I remained heavily involved in the arts, but I focused on cultivating a career in communications. I had a few internships in public relations and went straight into communications jobs right out of college. I felt very lost trying to find myself in the corporate world, and particularly struggled in jobs that were far removed from anything I loved (namely, entertainment and education). Eventually I started doing temp jobs, briefly working at Emerson College and Harvard University, and eventually landing a role doing marketing & sales at Yamaha Music School of Boston. That job was just entertainment-driven enough that I finally started to thrive. Alongside my work, I started to teach theatre at the school.

During the pandemic, I had to be especially careful about quarantine because my partner was undergoing chemotherapy and had to step away from all work outside of our home. I was lucky enough to have made friends at Yamaha – one offered me a role doing media & promotions for his newly founded 501c3 nonprofit Multiverse Concert Series.

Multiverse Concert Series holds events that incorporate arts and science to make high-level information more accessible to us all. We’ll take a topic like DNA, Mars, polymers, climate change, and present the topic with top speakers from places like MIT or Harvard – interspersed with art and performance inspired by the topic. Visual artists, dancers, musicians, DJs, and full symphonies help us explore possible worlds through immersive music, evocative discussion and mind-bending art in a cohesive, multimedia experience. Multiverse premiered our Kickstarter-funded Black Hole Symphony at the Museum of Science in Boston, an electrosymphonic score performed live under animated visuals at the Charles Hayden Planetarium, with pause for discussions with NASA scientists. We’ve been featured in many publications including Boston Globe and New Scientist. Our musical work was credited in Forbes by Dr. Clara Sousa-Silva of Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as helping her re-examine her own work which allowed her to discover the possibility of life on Venus.

It’s incredibly fulfilling working to uplift such an important project. But I don’t have to stop there. I still teach theatre, now with Upstage Theatre Schools here in Los Angeles. I also still pursue my love for performing in the arts. In the last year, I’ve performed with Netflix’s Stranger Things Experience, Universal Studios Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights, and in the upcoming indie film Party of Darkness – among a variety of other bookings. I never had to give up one to pursue the other.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

We get to create something that makes you feel something. We get to transport you to other worlds. We all get to escape this madness and swap it for another one together.

“Theater is my temple and my religion and my act of faith. Strangers sit in a room together and believe together.” – Harvey Fierstein

Contact Info:

• Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/corinnedecost
• Other: https://www.multiverseseries.org/about

Image Credits
Arthur Marroquin